Deputy Jacob Pickett may have been beyond saving, but that didn't stop Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen from trying.

Pickett, 34, was shot in the head during a police pursuit in Lebanon on March 2, 2018. Alleged shooter Anthony Baumgardt fired three rounds at the deputy as he ran, hitting him once as he came around a building with his K-9.

But that morning, in the grass at the Indian Springs apartment complex, Nielsen knelt by his officer, trying to bring him back to life.

"I think in my heart..." Nielsen says. The words drift off as impending tears stop him in his tracks.

There are three seconds of heavy silence.

"I think in my heart," he continues, his voice quavering, "when I was with Jake, I knew that he wasn’t gonna make it."

In the year since Pickett's death, Nielsen has made it his mission to ensure the deputy won’t be forgotten, using the tragedy as motivation to better serve families of the fallen statewide and locally and to establish a fund to pay for those officers’ funerals.

“If I had to dwell on the evil that took Jake’s life and not look at the mission of good,” Nielsen said, “I don’t know where I'd be today.”

Becoming a servant leader

Standing well over 6-feet tall, Nielsen's uniform only adds to an already commanding presence.

But the man called "Big Dog" effuses a gentle warmth. His eyes crinkle when he flashes a beaming smile; his laugh builds from breathy to a deep, booming crescendo.

Born and raised on a farm in northwestern Iowa, Nielsen grew up in a bustling household deeply rooted in faith. His first career, in engineering, brought him to Indiana. He started working as a part-time officer and reserve deputy in his free time.

“(I) absolutely fell in love with helping others and being that servant leader where you put others first,” he said.

In 1993, he quit engineering to become a full-time officer. By 2002, he’d earned a master’s in business administration, his sights set on eventually becoming sheriff.

He rose to the rank of chief deputy in 2007 and in 2014 stepped into the role of sheriff after his predecessor's resignation. Nielsen ran for the office later that year and was elected with nearly 80 percent of the vote. He began his second term in January.

“I really try to stay behind the scenes if I can, because I think that’s where I'm most effective, but ... it’s not just me,' he said. "You surround yourself with good people.”

Losing Pickett last year was heartbreaking for the department and the community they serve.

The night of the shooting, Nielsen, surrounded by deputies, stood before a sea of faces illuminated by soft candlelight.

“Jake was prepared, ladies and gentlemen," Nielsen said then to the mourners gathered on Lebanon's courthouse square. "He was prepared to go to war, and he did that today. He was also prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice, which he did today."

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Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen puts a hand over his heart as he thanks the community for its support during a vigil held for Boone County sheriff deputy Jacob Pickett in Lebanon Town Square, after he was fatally shot while serving a warrant in Lebanon, Ind., Friday, March 2, 2018. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)

'He was magic at being the face of all this.'

The support shown at that vigil helped himsee the path forward.

“In my career,” he said, “I've never seen a community come together like they did that night."

In the subsequent days, the sheriff stood before the press and cried as he and then-prosecutor Todd Meyer announced charges against Baumgardt and driver John Baldwin Jr.

When Baumgardt made a comment about "a dog" on the walk to his first court appearance, it was Nielsen who reminded him that that dog — Pickett's K-9 partner — had a name: Brik.

When he couldn't sleep, he wrote open letters to the community, urging them to draw strength from Pickett's "passion, dedication, and commitment."

Amber Targgart, former principal of Perry-Worth Elementary, said Nielsen's combination of strength and vulnerability endeared him to the community.

"His heart was completely open, and ... everything that he did was to support that family and to support the case and to support the people that he works with on a daily basis," she said.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter, who took command of the crime scene that morning and stood with Nielsen as he announced Pickett's wounds were fatal, said the outpouring of community support in these situations isn’t uncommon. It can be overwhelming, he said, but Nielsen navigated it beautifully.

“These kinds of things happen and then all of a sudden there’s this mass impetus to support us and what we do, no matter what color shirt you wear,” Carter said. “And Mike was magic at that; he was magic at being the face of all this.”

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Mike Nielsen, Boone County Sheriff, chats with friend and well-wisher Tom Roark, Lebanon, outside the Boone County Sheriff's Office and Jail, home office of deputy Jacob Pickett, Lebanon, Saturday, March 3, 2018. The deputy was fatally shot a day earlier while helping local police serve a warrant.(Photo: Robert Scheer/IndyStar)

What the community didn't see, though, was just how deeply the ordeal affected Nielsen.

“I lost the wind out of my sails for about 45 days,” Nielsen said. “But I never showed that to people. I was still doing my job every single day and doing what I needed to do, but emotionally, it drained me.”

It wasn’t until he and his wife took a week-long vacation in Florida that May that Nielsen was able to clear his mind and start to figure out how to move on. His first morning back, he went to the office before anyone else and took down the leftover flowers and notes from the community that blanketed the administrative office.

It was important to remember Pickett, he said, but it was also important not to sit in sadness. The deputy would want them to work hard in his memory, not dwell.

“The next days never really got easier. I’m hoping that they will,” Nielsen said. “But I think we as a department now, as an office, are stronger together than what we ever have been.”

Creating a culture of care

Nielsen was able to manage his mental well-being after Pickett's homicide because he had seen what trauma can do to officers before.

In 2016, police found 31-year-old Katherine Giehll and her 4-year-old son, Raymond, dead inside their Zionsville home, their shooting likely motivated by a dispute over the family trust.

The horror of that case would affect the responding officers for the rest of their lives, he remembered saying at the scene.

But he didn’t realize how hard it would hit his own home.

His daughter, Taylor, was the officer who recorded the autopsy for the Lebanon Police Department.

“She was a very young, strong police officer that thought she could handle it, and I thought I could handle it,” he said. “... And unfortunately, several months after that incident, that tragic event started catching up with her and she tried to take her own life.”

Taylor Nielsen, who now works as a K-9 officer with the sheriff's office, speaks openly about her mental health, and together, father and daughter advocate for better officer wellness programs.

Brik, Officer Taylor Nielsen and her father Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen leave the Boone County Courthouse, Wednesday, March 7, 2018, after Anthony Baumgardt's initial hearing in the killing of Boone County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Pickett. Brik was Pickett's partner.(Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)

Nielsen himself started going to therapy in 2017, the same year he established an officer wellness program in his office and hired a mental health counselor.

In 2018, he was able to double the funding of that program, budgeting $50,000 to provide free counseling to employees in need. Nearly 30 of the department's 150-person staff are enrolled in the program.

Having that system in place didn’t take away the sting of losing Pickett, but it may have prevented further tragedy.

Nearly 160 police officers nationwide committed suicide last year, compared to 144 lost in the line of duty, a statistic Nielsen believes is unacceptable.

It's critical, he said, that law enforcement agencies change the dialogue about mental health and emotional well-being within their own departments.

“We’re losing police officers at an alarming rate,” he said.

He doesn't want to see another loss like Pickett's. But if it does happen and another officer is killed, Nielsen wants to make sure his team has the resources in place to navigate the aftermath.

"I don't know what I would do if it ever happened again," he said. "It scares the hell out of me."

'I just want to see it make a difference'

Along with Indiana State Police Superintendent Carter, Hamilton County Superior Court Judge Steve Nation and others, Nielsen is one of the founding members of a nonprofit created to help the families of officers slain in the line of duty.

Still in its infancy, the Indiana Fallen Heroes Foundation will provide financial aid to the officers’ families and establish in each case a bank account to which the community can direct donations, eliminating tax implications that would otherwise exist with an online crowdfund.

It would also pay for that officer's funeral arrangements.

The Indiana State Police Alliance has already offered $40,000 in seed money to start the fund. The board has not yet begun publicly fundraising.

"It’s unconscionable to me that somebody in our profession that’s chosen to die for someone that doesn’t even know who they are would be killed in the line of duty and there wouldn’t be a means by which to pay for a funeral. But that’s the reality," Carter said.

“Not anymore,” he added.

Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen touches the casket after speaking at the funeral for Deputy Jacob Pickett, at Connection Pointe Christian Church in Brownsburg, Ind., Friday, March 9, 2018. Pickett was fatally shot the morning of Friday, March 2, while chasing a man fleeing from police. He was a five-year veteran of the department and is survived by his wife Jennifer and two young children.(Photo: Jenna_Watson/Indy_Star)

Nielsen also hopes to use his experience to pass along a “playbook” of sorts for administrators, offering guidance on what to expect in the days, weeks and months following a shooting.

Along with processing grief, there’s paperwork — lots of it — and Nielsen wants to help them navigate the bureaucracy any way he can.

Separately, Nielsen has shared Pickett's story with state lawmakers in support of House Bill 1222, which proposes increasing the state’s public safety officer death benefits from $150,000 to $250,000. The bill was passed unanimously by the House Committee on Employment, Labor and Pensions and was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means early last month.

It’s a lot of scrutiny for someone who thinks he works best out of the spotlight.

“Every single day … I don’t want that attention,” he said. “I just want to see it make a difference in people's lives. And by us providing that playbook, by us helping somebody else, some other administrator some other family get through those first several days of this, that’s really what we’re striving for.”

A step closer to justice

Baumgardt, Pickett’s alleged shooter, isn’t expected to appear before a jury until late 2020. Since prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, the investigation and preparation can take more time than a typical case.

Jury trials for Baldwin Jr., the driver, and John Austin Ball, who police allege provided Baumgardt with meth and the gun used to kill the officer, are scheduled to begin later this year.

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Anthony Baumgardt is led into the Boone County Courthouse, March 7, 2018, for his initial hearing in the killing of Boone County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Pickett.(Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)

While he’s glad the legal process is moving forward, Nielsen said it might mean the next 12 months will be harder than the last.

“That’s what scares me a little bit,” he said, “because we’ve got to relive it all over again.”

It's impossible not to think about a loss that happened under your watch, he said.

“The only time it doesn’t have an effect on you,” Superintendent Carter said, “is when you’re sleeping.”

Meanwhile, Nielsen said he's comforted that Pickett's legacy lives on — through him and in those he helped save through organ donation.

"Somebody’s walking around today with his heart and with his lungs and with his skin and all those organs that he was able to give after death,” Nielsen said. “He’s still out there, and he’s still walking around."

Pickett is the lodestar by which Nielsen aims to navigate the rest of his career. He hopes young officers do the same.

“I think we have so many good police officers and deputies in this county and across this country,” Nielsen said, “and if they could just model themselves after Jake, they would see that what they do every single day makes a difference. Because what he did every single day made a difference.”

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One year after Boone County Deputy Jacob Pickett was killed, the town and region show up to honor him and help retire his police dog.
Robert Scheer, robert.scheer@indystar.com